I got all embarrassed when he said that. I wish I could accept compliments gracefully! I couldn’t even shake my hair over my face to hide my stupid blushes. Quickly, I changed the subject. I said, “Tell me about you! Are your mum and dad over here? Why did you come? Don’t you miss Poland?”
“I miss at first,” said Alex. “My mum and dad, they stay. I call every day. I very…what the word?”
I said, “Homesick?”
“Homesick! I very homesick. Now not so bad. Specially now not so bad.” He grinned as he said that, and I started blushing all over again!
So why did you leave?” I mumbled.
He hunched a shoulder. “No job. No money. My family…not rich. My dad, he not well. My mum, she work. Not earn much. No future. Not good. This—” he opened his arms—“this the place to be. Good job, earn money…pretty girl!”
He took my hand across the table. Hot tingles ran up my arm. A woman sitting nearby caught my eye and smiled at me. I smiled back.
“I want come last year,” said Alex, “but my mum, she say wait. She say when you seventeen, then you go. How old you?”
“Me? I’m…fifteen. Nearly sixteen!” The words were out before I could stop them. I would have given anything to take them back, but I wasn’t brave enough. It would make me look silly. But why did I say it? Why? Who would believe I was nearly sixteen? I did have my hair up, and I was wearing lipstick, and I know that I do look quite a bit older than my age, but…nearly sixteen?
I waited with heart hammering for Alex to laugh. Instead, quite seriously, he said, “So you still in school?”
I said, “Yes,” and pulled a face, as if I’d rather not have been.
Then he did laugh. He said, “Me, I free…no more school! No more lesson! Out in the world.”
“I wish I could be,” I said. It was absolutely not true. I like school! My tongue just seemed to be running away with me. Alex asked me if I’d like another coffee, but regretfully I said that I probably ought to be getting home. I could have rung Mum and pretended I was staying on at Katie’s, but I already felt nervous about lying to her. Alex wanted to walk me back, so I said “just to the corner” in case Mum or Dad—or Ellie! Just as bad—happened to be looking out of the window.
It seemed for a moment, as we got to the corner, that he might be going to kiss me. I think I wanted him to. That is…I wanted him to want to! After all, it was what people did on dates. But in the end he changed his mind. Or maybe he hadn’t ever been going to. Did that mean he didn’t fancy me? Oh, God, please don’t let it mean that! Please!
And then, very solemnly, he said, “You like see me again maybe?”
At which my heart gave this massive leap and I said, “Yessss!” and we immediately agreed that we would meet the following Saturday, same time, same place.
Alex said, “I look forward,” and he squeezed my hand, very hard. And that was when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was about to fall in love…
I was aching to tell someone! Ellie was coming downstairs as I let myself in. She said, “Ooh, you’re all pink.”
I nearly cried, “Yes, I’m in love!” But I managed to restrain myself. It would have been absolutely fatal to let Ellie know.
Even as it was she felt the need to go and tell Mum that “Tamsin’s all pink…pink as a raspberry!” Which of course just made me go even pinker.
Mum laid a hand on my forehead and said, “I hope you’re not sickening for something.”
I gave a silly little giggle of excitement.
“You are just so weird,” said Ellie. She turned to Mum. “We don’t want her throwing up, or anything. D’you think she should stay at home this evening?”
I wouldn’t actually have minded staying at home. If I’d stayed at home I could have wallowed in the bath, listening to music and dreaming. But Mum wouldn’t hear of it.
“It’s a celebration,” she said. “We’ve all got to be there.”
So we all trooped up the road to Giovanni’s to eat pasta and drink champagne with Mum proudly explaining to anyone who would listen that “Ellie’s just been on the television!” She did it jokingly, but I could tell that underneath she was simmering with a quiet, mumsy-type pride. I have to admit, when I saw the thing later, Ellie did look good. She was a natural! And I guess it was quite something to have the camera pick her out twice, in such a huge crowd of people. I didn’t begrudge her her little moment of triumph. I might have done, once; but not any more. I didn’t begrudge her anything any more. She could be on TV as much as she liked. I was going out with Alex!
I made a resolve that I wouldn’t say anything to Katie even though I was bursting to let it all out. I could see that she didn’t want me splurging all over her. I was quite surprised, at first break on Monday, when she dragged me off to a quiet corner and said, “Right! Tell! What happened?”
I said, “Nothing really happened. We just sat and talked, and then…he walked me home!”
“Did you ask him in?”
“No! Mum still thinks I was round with you. Can I be round with you again next Saturday? Cos I’m seeing him again then!”
Slowly, as if giving me up as a lost cause, Katie shook her head.
“Pleeeze,” I said.
She sighed. “All right. If you must. What about our sleepover?”
“I could sleep over Friday.”
“And then go off next day and meet him.”
“Not until the afternoon.”
“A secret assignation.” She does choose good words. Of course, her mum is an English teacher. “So tell me what you’ve discovered about him.”
It was all the excuse I needed. I said, “Well…he’s only been here a little while, which is why he doesn’t speak much English. Yet. But he will, cos he’s really trying. He’s Polish. He comes from a leetle veellitch—”
“You what?” said Katie.
“A leetle veellitch. It’s the way he says it! It’s so cute. A leetle veellitch…”
“Yeah, OK, I get it! Go on. What else?”
“The other boy—the one with red-hair—”
“The rude one.”
“Yes. His name’s Marek. They came over together. The older guy, the one they work for, he came from the same village. But he came two years ago. Now he has his own business.”
“So how old is he? Your guy. Alex.”
It gave me such a tingle when she
